Quote:
Originally Posted by PilotMan
OK so our first year in the Premiership was a success. We were expected to be respectable, but only with a transfer budget of 3.2M. HAAAAAAAA! We were still way, way below our salary budget. In an effort to spend some of that money and give our offense some punch we signed 31yr old, Jozy Altidore on a free and got a young Italian striker on loan.
The board hated Altidore. In fact, the board hated every move I made in the offseason. We spent the year bouncing between 3 keepers (Trying not to burn out our 20 yr old who is getting call ups from England but yet to get capped, and our other guys), and mixing and matching strikers to find some combination that clicked up front. I found that most of my young guys were just out matched and aren't really Premiership quality. Altidore lead the team in scoring but never really got it together. He was maddening to deal with. Our Italian striker despite looking great sucked. He had 1 goal in 14 games. Ugh.
We got hosed in the Cup drawing Chelsea early. So that didn't go great. Despite all that we played really good defense most of the time and finished just over .500 and good enough for 8th place. We even qualified for the Euro Cup qualifiers! HOT DAMN!!!!!
We added some punch this last offseason, a young Turkish international who is already the best striker on the squad and we added an aging 35yr old Luis Suarez who hadn't had a regular starting job in 2 years for depth, and bought an 18-yr old kid off of Manchester United hoping he develops into something offensively minded.
Our opening friendly is against Roma and they lay the smack down to the tune of 5-1. Next thing I know I get a letter from the Board and they tell me they think I could be doing better!!!!!
WTF ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!
We took this POS, semi pro team from the BSS to the Premiership in about years. We brought the team to financial prosperity, more than doubled the size of the stadium, added a kick ass training program, and took the team to a Continental competition! I COULD BE DOING BETTER?!
The board of Maidenhead is officially smoking crack.
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Update:
Our adjustments up front paid off in spades. We had also added a young Italian striker on loan and he lit the world on fire. Our young Turkish forward suffered a major knee injury and was lost by the 5th game so we went shopping again. I figured, if we are going to have a transfer budget we might as well use some of it. We landed a young Moroccan national named Rayan Chihab. Chihab would go on to win Preimership player of the year.
The best find though was an Ivorian named Ibrahima Ouattara. We paid a miniscule 3.6M for him from Bari and he ended up scoring 23 goals in 22 games with 6 assists and an average rating of 8.3. Guy is just a monster and we have him for 4 more years.
We finished the season in 5th place. A solid spot in Europe for next year too. The biggest surprise for this Maidenhead squad was our performance in the Euro Cup. From the qualifiers, the group stage, to the knockouts, we just kept winning. We beat big teams, we beat little teams. In fact, that same Roma team that schooled us in the preseason last year? Yeah, we took them out too. We beat Liverpool in the Semi Finals and set up a final in front of 145000 fans against Juventus. We played awesome, dominated possession and outshot them 3 to 1. Nothing went in though and we were left to rue a 0-1 defeat.
Boooo. What a disappointment. Still a great year though. Maidenhead is now listed as a RICH ballclub. Our stadium just went from 15.5k to 19k, as I slowly convince the board to expand, but they are not on board with the full youth academy yet.
Things are looking good for us, but we still aren't even close to the kind of money that Chelsea (lost 1 game last season) are spending. Not really even competitive with them either. I'll take this for now though.